Living in Social and Political Crisis

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Lecture 2b: Ecopsychology

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Theodore Roszak What is Ecopsychology?

1. The emerging synthesis of ecology and psychology 2. The skillful application of ecological insight to the practice of psychotherapy 3. The study of our emotional bond with the Earth 4. The search for an environmentally-based standard of mental health 5. Re-defining "sanity" as if the whole world mattered."

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What is Ecopsychology?
Our present ego-feeling is, therefore, only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusiveindeed, an allembracingfeeling which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it (Freud, Civilization and Its Disconents)

Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology

1. The core of the mind is the ecological unconscious where our natural feelings of connection to the world of nature and other organisms rest, connected to what the biologist E.O. Wilson calls 'biophilia'

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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology

2. Repression of the ecological unconscious is the deepest root of many of the psychological, social, ecological, spiritual, and physical problems in contemporary industrial society. Ecocidal policies do not only attack and devastate 'external' nature but our 'internal' natures as well. This is why ecopsychology talks of 'Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind'
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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology

3. Increasing evidence from a range of scientific disciplines have shown the psychological, social and physical benefits of living with nature and near natural spaces and the costs if we do not. (eg. Children under 12 who live near a natural area are 21% less likely to get depression : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/830702 4.stm)

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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology

4. Open access to the ecological unconscious is the path to sanity. The contents of the ecological unconscious represent, in some degree, at some level of mentality, the living record of evolution, tracing back to distant initial conditions in the history of time.

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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology

5. Contemporary studies in the ordered complexity of nature tell us that life and mind emerge from this evolutionary tale as culminating natural systems within the unfolding sequence of physical, biological, mental, and cultural systems we know as "the universe."

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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology

6. Just as it has been the goal of previous therapies to recover the repressed contents of the unconscious, so the goal of ecopsychology is to awaken the inherent sense of environmental reciprocity that lies within the ecological unconscious.

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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology

7. Other therapies seek to heal the alienation between person and person, person and family, person and society. Ecopsychology or ecotherapy seeks to heal the more fundamental alienation between the recently created urban psyche and the age-old natural environment.

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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology

8. For ecopsychology as for other therapies, the crucial stage of development is the life of the child. The ecological unconscious is regenerated in the newborn's enchanted sense of the world. Ecopsychology seeks to recover the child's quality of experience in functionally "sane" adults including through the experience of wilderness or wildness in nature and in inner nature
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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology

9. This insight is also found in some traditional spiritual practices as well as in poetry. Wordsworth's hymns to the child's love of nature are basic texts for developmental ecopsychology, a first step toward creating the ecological ego (Wordsworth Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood)
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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology

10. The ecological ego matures toward a sense of ethical responsibility to the planet that is as vividly experienced as our ethical responsibility to other people. It seeks to weave that responsibility into the fabric of social relations and political decisions.

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Theodore Roszak 8 Principles of Ecopsychology

11. Among the therapeutic projects most important to ecopsychology is the reevaluation of certain compulsively "masculine" character traits that permeate our structures of political power and which drive us to dominate nature as if it were an alien and rightless realm. In this regard, ecopsychology draws significantly on the insights of ecofeminism with a view to demystifying the sexual stereotypes.
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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology

12. Whatever contributes to small scale social forms and personal empowerment nourishes the ecological ego. Whatever strives for large-scale domination and the suppression of personhood undermines the ecological ego.

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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology

13. Ecopsychology therefore deeply questions the essential sanity of our gargantuan urban-industrial culture, whether capitalistic or collectivistic in its organization. But it does so without necessarily rejecting the technological genius of our species or some lifeenhancing measure of the industrial power we have assembled. Ecopsychology is postindustrial not anti-industrial
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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology

14. Ecopsychology holds that there is a synergistic interplay between planetary and personal well-being

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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology Summary

1. "The core of the mind is the ecological unconscious." 2. "The contents of the ecological unconscious represent....the living record of evolution." 3. "The goal of ecopsychology is to awaken the inherent sense of environmental reciprocity that lies within the ecological unconscious." 4. "The crucial stage of development is the life of the child."
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Theodore Roszak Principles of Ecopsychology Summary

5. The ecological ego matures toward a sense of ethical responsibility with the planet. 6. Ecopsychology needs to re-evaluate certain "masculine" character traits that lead us to dominate nature." 7. "Whatever contributes to small scale social forms and personal empowerment nourish the ecological ego." 8. "There is a synergistic interplay between planetary and personal well-being."
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